A 3rd Pakistan was supposed to be created

[Malang]

"gestures of goodwill" are undertaken by the nations in question themselves, not by a third party that was supposed to be delineating the border based on a particular formula, and just decided to throw the rule book out when it came to those particular issues.

quite right but in my other post as I said there were 3 scenarios

kashmir goes to Pakistan
Kashmir goes to India
Kashmir is independent --> Kashmir anti-Pak and India, Kashmir Anti-Pak, Kashmir anti-India, Kashmir pro-Pak and India..

IN case of 1 it was undesirable for India getting land access to Pakistan in case 2 it was desirable (reqd or necessary, perhaps?) and in case 3 further cases..

again a topic comes that Jammu was hindu dominated and giving a land access to India would have done something.. It can also be argued Kashmir without a land access to India could've made them go against India..

(btw above all is speculation and a possible justification? ) to be fair there is no reason why Radcliffe did what he did and what formulae he used.... and Indians and Pakistanis can debate for the next years saying that Radcliffe was unfair to them.. from what little I have read Radcliffe was an astute Brit who did all he could to uphold British interests by again making people fight, this time on the drawing of borders...

I will repeat - there was already a much larger chunk of territory of Pakistan that was separated, and there were no issues over that particular "lack of connection".

it would've been impossible to give land access to both divisions of Pakistan.. but it would have been possible to give land access to a "Princely state
whose fate no one knew.. to protect its interests...

Also, were these districts the only connection that India would have had with kashmir, or was there more of a shared border between the two? If there was more of a shared border, then the argument of "providing a connection" is moot, since a connecting route could have been created at some expense elsewhere along the India-Kashmir border.

I am not really aware of the topography.. but the Jammu plains (and rest of Kashmir) are connected to India essentially through Pathankot (in the Punjab plains) rest of the paths are mountainous and often closed during winters or in case of land falls...

If there was no sharing of the border, except through these districts, then perhaps Venkat's argument of "no third choice" is revealing, since without a shared border Kashmir would have no choice but to join Pakistan.

I didn't happen to read Venkat's point but yes it would have given an (unfair?) advantage to Pakistan.. (I have also raise this point above)/.

[quoe] In either case, the decision to simply move Muslim majority provinces to India comes across as a biased decision with ulterior motives.[/quote]

Ulterior motives in interests of Kashmir not necessarily India though...

The part in parenthesis points out that your "single entity" statement is incorrect.

and why is that??? for all pratical purposes the subcontinent is a single entity ..
a person can to his PoV argue they are not one nation or were never one nation or there too many division etc.

but one thing is certain feelings of nationalism are quite ill defined...

a Pakistani Baloch may love Pakistan as much as a Pakistani Kashmiri but both have nothing in common...

similarly during the struggle for Independence Bacha Khan, Bose, Bhagat Singh, Tilak, Ashfaque Khan etc. all shared a similar passion and love for the nation though they had nothing in common in terms of language they spoke, religion they followed, customs and culture etc. etc...

similarly a person living in Lahore and a person living in Amritsar a distance of not more than 50km.. generally hate each other with as much vengeance as humanly(diabolically at times) possible..

so if you call subcontinent as a nation then it is a topic which you may successfully argue against (and by some may be for but I am not the guy IMO)..

even when Italy was created/unified, a politician said "We have created Italy and now all we have to do is create Italians" (not sure of exact wordings)...

similary the Swiss cantons are pretty much uncommon.. even Germany as a nation has existed for only 100 years...

is there a thread on this topic? I think this is an excellent topic to gain an understanding...

 

[Venkat]

I will name a couple of books where I have read this but their are many more but these are the ones that come to my head:
-The Emergence of Pakistan(Chaudhri Mohammed Ali)
-Friends not Masters(Ayub Khan)
-Mountbatten
-Pakistan(Daniel)
-Jinnah(Hector Bilito)
-Pakistan(by Stephan Cohen)
-Memoirs of Lord Ismay
Note that I have written the names of the authors of the book but some authors I cannot recall. Read any of these you will see what I am talking about. And besides I think on this topic we have unammious acceptance that the Princely states were indeed given the option to declare independence. This part is well known what is at debate is wether India's claim are right or Pakistan's claim are right.

Thanks for the references I will check them out.

However, Its not what the forum believes in but what historical evidence there is.

It appears that there is no formal declaration or paperwork by the british from pre-independence days that gives the princely rulers that option to go independent. This is merely the interpretation of the members 60 years after the fact.

The only document that (i can quote) and is out there is the Indian Independence Act that merely states that the deals and agreements that the British had with Indian rulers will cease to exist from Aug 14/15 . Have the british given any other declaration to the rulers advising them of their options - I dont think they did.

it is of interest that of the 500 odd princely states only kashmir and hyderabad vacillated. One would think that more would have declared independence if given such an option - no?

I have to say, Hyderabad had the best shot of going independent given a chance.

Incidentally Pakistan flew in many arms and ammunition to hyderabad thru the flyer sidney cotton - but all that came to nought as the Hyderabad army didnt put up any good fight.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

Malang:

I think the issue of Kashmir having a contiguous border with India regardless of the Muslim districts needs to be cleared up to continue a more focused discussion, so if anyone has maps showing the above or information validating one side or the other, it would be helpful.

Assuming that Kashmir would have had a contiguous border with India regardless of the presence of the Muslim districts, the argument of "a connection to India had to be maintained to be fair to Kashmir" is invalid, since the shared border would have allowed the Kashmiris to choose India regardless of which nation got the Muslim districts. The argument that it was more difficult to stay connected to Kashmir through the other routes is not valid - that would have been India's responsibility - to develop/maintain routes to its territory.

The other issue that needs to be clarified is whether States could only accede if they "shared a border" with either India or Pakistan - I find that hard to believe since it would have meant that Pakistan would have never argued for Junagadh - of course the argument related to that is there would have been an ocean link.

Assuming there was a condition that States could only accede to a nation if there was a shared border, then objections about how that rule would be "unfair" should have been brought about when the rule was drafted, and not by circumventing the delineation process by shuffling districts around to give one side a "border" in one particular case - Kashmir.

There are a couple of Sticky threads in the General history forum that discuss this issue. The gist of the argument being that while India and Pakistan continue to be two nations made up of diverse cultures, there was never such a thing as a "single Indian entity" until the subjugation of the subcontinent by the British. At that point the various empires, kingdoms etc. were brought under the ambit of a colony called British India. Throughout history the subcontinent has not just remained composed of various cultures and ethnicities, but also several different nations/nation states.

 

[Malang]

Malang: The argument that it was more difficult to stay connected to Kashmir through the other routes is not valid - that would have been India's responsibility - to develop/maintain routes to its territory.

Kashmir could have been independent too and in that case having an "all weather" land route also from India would have not put Kashmiris at the "mercy" of Pakistan...

the fact two districts going to India makes less of difference(esp in view of above) on the overall statistics since 60% of Punjab went to Pakistan though the population of Pakistani Punjab was 55%... (I am not sure abt the numbers ... if some one could confirm this)..

The other issue that needs to be clarified is whether States could only accede if they "shared a border" with either India or Pakistan - I find that hard to believe

Of course they needn't have shared borders to accede...

There are a couple of Sticky threads in the General history forum that discuss this issue. The gist of the argument being that while India and Pakistan continue to be two nations made up of diverse cultures, there was never such a thing as a "single Indian entity" until the subjugation of the subcontinent by the British. At that point the various empires, kingdoms etc. were brought under the ambit of a colony called British India. Throughout history the subcontinent has not just remained composed of various cultures and ethnicities, but also several different nations/nation states.

Thanks I shall have a look at them.... sounds interesting..

 

[rubyjackass]

Deleted this post.