Resolution of Central Committee of Communist Party of India
(August 2, 1953)
At the root of the problems of Indo-Pakistani relations lies the Kashmir dispute. Both states deny the right of self-determination to the peoples of Jammu and Kashmir. Here we publish an important document of the Communist Party of India of August, 1953 which deals with the situation at that time. It does not directly pertain to the current phase of the dispute in the subcontinent. While Marxists recognise the right of nations to self- determination they consider that the forms of this may be secession, autonomy or federation. When deciding on the question the overall impact of the form of self determination on the democratic movement has to be taken into account. In accordance with these norms the Communist Party in the period 1951-53 took its decisions considering that the needs of democracy were better met by connections between Jammu and Kashmir and the Indian Union. 2019 is not 1953. A new assessment would be required today given the virtual military occupation and intense oppression in that region which has led to tens of thousands of deaths.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party of India views with grave concern the reports coming from Kashmir that some leading personalities of the Sheikh Abdullah group and its supporters in the National Conference have made public declarations that the State of Kashmir should he made independent of India and that its new status be guaranteed by India, Pakistan and the United Nations.
It is also stated that the areas of Jammu and Ladakh should be allowed to be fully incorporated In the Indian Union.
It is clear that these declarations mean that the problem of Kashmir is entering a new and very serious phase of its crisis, as serious as when Kashmir was made an object of invasion five years ago.
These declarations first mean that the Kashmir Valley separates itself from even the limited but vital ties it has with India and which are expressed in the Act of Limited Accession of Kashmir and Jammu to India and the further mutual aid visualised in the Delhi Agreement.
Secondly, it means that Kashmir undergoes a new partition in which the vicious principle that predominantly Muslim and Hindu areas cannot and should not remain together is implicitly admitted.
Such a partition will again encourage those forces of communal reaction and their imperialist inspirers who have so long imposed innumerable atrocities and so much harm on the people of India, and Pakistan, Jammu and Kashmir.
Role of U.N.
The fine traditions of the Kashmiri people, who have been immune from the virus, are thus sought to be destroyed to mutual loss of the people of both India and Kashmir where Hindu-Muslim amity will be put to a new ‘Strain.
The third and the most disastrous outcome of this line is the proposal that, the United Nations should guarantee this new independent state of Kashmir from any aggression.
Anyone knowing the character of the United Nations as it is today and the way it is dominated by the Anglo-American, imperialist bloc, which has been mainly responsible for fomenting dissensions between India and Pakistan on the issue of Kashmir, will see that the guarantee by the UNO means importing American, military forces in Kashmir, and, in course of time, its incorporation in the Pakistani areas which are being made the bases of warmongering plans of America.
Thus the alluring slogan of independent Kashmir becomes a reactionary slogan that will hand over Kashmir to the imperialist warmonger allowing their forces to occupy the strategic Valley of Kashmir and threaten the peace of all the neighbouring States including that of India.
Sheikh Abdullah’s Govt.
The Central Committee therefore, calls, upon all democratic forces in India and the State of Jammu and Kashmir to prevent this new disaster overtaking our people.
But in order to find the path to prevent this disaster, it is necessary to know how it has come to pass that these leaders, who not long-ago were adhering to a non-communal and democratic standpoint have now taken to such a line against the interests of the people? What has led them to this path?
The people of Kashmir, and Jammu are in the grip of the same economic crisis, that has overtaken the economy of India and its people, the same crisis that is, affecting all the capitalist countries and under-developed countries of Asia and Africa.
The millions of peasants, artisans, middle-class people, traders, are suffering from low income, high prices, poverty and unemployment and with no near prospect of any way out of the crisis.
The people Kashmir beat the raiders back with the help of the Indian Army; they fought for a land law that was expected to rid them of the burdens of landlordism; they removed the old Maharajah and had their own Constituent Assembly with power to make their own Constitution. But all that has not been sufficient to resolve the problems of life of the people.
The Government of Sheikh Abdullah and the Government of India have both failed to solve the main problems of peoples’ living, of land, work and trade.
The agents of American imperialists in the guise of the United Nations observers and landlord reactionaries have taken advantage of the dissatisfaction, of the people to put forward the idea that a separation from India and independent existence will enable them to solve their problems with the alluring promises of loans and aids from the UNO and the Americans to develop an Independent Kashmir State.
An independent Kashmir can also open the trade whose natural routes lie through Pakistan but are now blocked because of Kashmir’s accession to India.
With some plausibility these forces argue that if the India Government can follow the path of taking loans from the, Americans to tide over her difficulties, why should not an independent Kashmir be able to do it.
Diversionary Slogan
The leaders of the Sheikh Abdullah group, who have held the reins of Government so far, now want to pursue this line in order to hide their failures and divert the attention of the masses from these failures and their real reasons.
The reactionaries, fail to point out the fate of South Korea that was occupied and devastated by the UNO – Americans, the fate of the nearest neighbour State of Afghanistan, whose economy has been looted by the Americans and the fate of even India which, because of its being tied up with sterling and dollar capital, is unable to take its independent road to progress.
In order to save its own narrow interests, this group is utilising the ignorance of the masses, their discontent with the existing Government, to sidetrack them into the worst disaster that would follow Kashmir’s separation from India and its line-up with the UNO or Pakistan.
The Government of Sheikh Abdullah failed because it did not fully implement the land laws that were intended to rid the peasant of burdens of landlordism. It obstructed and suppressed the peasant forces that were implementing the laws with their own action. It allowed unreasonable levies on the peasant producers, and allowed speculators and landlords to get hold of them in the name of feeding the towns.
It failed to prevent corruption in its own apparatus, which in the early stages of the incoming of the new State, had the advantage of being run by the leadership of the National Conference and was not made of hardened bureaucrats.
But when these new rulers themselves began to be transformed into the image of the old rulers, the Sheikh Abdullah Government did not allow the democratic masses to bring up their independent mass organisations and forces to correct the newly-rising reactionaries.
It now wants to hide its failures by diversionary slogans of independence to mislead the people.
The reactionaries in the Governmental circles in India have also helped in the development by insisting on full accession, on retaining the Maharajah and the Privy Purse, and by trying to grab the economy of Kashmir in the interests of the big monopolists of India, and by refusing to help the new State with greater financial aid unless their terms of full financial integration were accepted.
Moreover, the failure of the Sheikh Abdullah group to satisfy the just demands of the Jammu people in the matter of their language, Service-employment and administrative autonomy without separation from Kashmir, enabled the landlord reactionaries to use the, discontent of the people and the help which certain reactionary Hindu circles rendered them has enabled some leaders of the Sheikh group to easily sow the idea in the minds of the Kashmiri people of a fresh partition and separation from India.
Under such circumstances, the democratic forces in Kashmir and Jammu must come forward to save the people from these new designs of the imperialists and their conscious supporters or misguided unconscious votaries.
The democratic forces must refuse to separate Kashmir from India as such separation will not mean independence for the people but enslavement and further impoverishment.
The status that Kashmir has today by the Act of Limited Accession, and even the terms of the Delhi Agreement, are, such that thereby its people not only unite in friendship with India, but they, also stand to gain from the vast strength of the economy of India, which is capable of helping Kashmir to grow prosperous, provided the democratic forces on either side were able to make the Government, follow democratic policies.
By limited accession, Kashmir retains her right to frame her own Constitution, her own fundamental tights, her own laws to abolish landlordism without compensation, her right to remove the Maharajah and the privy purse and the right to be independent of the interference of the President of the Indian Republic.
The
democratic forces both in Kashmir and India must struggle to let
Kashmir retain this status of virtual independence within the framework
of the Indian Union to which it accedes in the very sense of limited
accession.
The existence of the Indian Army must not mean and does not mean the occupation of Kashmir by an alien hostile conquering force interfering in the life of the people.
The Indian Army only defends Kashmir against foreign invasion, which task was given to it by the free consent of the Kashmiri people. The Indian, Army must behave as a friend for defence and not as a police force against the people, interfering in the internal affairs of the country.
The democratic forces on either side must see that the Delhi Agreement renders adequate financial aid for solving the crisis in the life of people and is not used as a weapon to draw Kashmir within the vicious grip of the monopoly financiers of India.
They must resist full financial integration of the two States, as under present conditions the powerful finance circles of India and their budgetary manoeuvres will ruin the weak economy of Kashmir and sow further seeds of suspicion and discontent.
Mutual benefit and development of peoples’ interests must be the key to all agreements and their implementation.
While today Kashmir with her limited accession has all the advantages of independence and autonomy without being a prey to foreign intervention, the new slogans of separation and partition would land Kashmir in the hands of Imperialist warmongers and worst looters of her people.
The democratic forces on either side must see that the peasants of Kashmir are helped to rid themselves of the burden of landlordism. We must see that friendly agreements between India and Pakistan are made to help open trade to the benefit of all and that a prosperous peasant and honest trader helps the artisans to get upon his feet again.
The democratic forces must campaign for the fights of, the Jammu and Ladakh people, in the matter of language, services, local administrative autonomy and financial and civil liberties.
Only when democratic forces inside and outside the “National Conference and the Constituent Assembly of Kashmir, basing themselves on the Kisan Sabha and other organisations of the people build a powerful democratic front and with the aid of their brethren in India develop a powerful, movement and organisation to solve the problem of land, rent, taxes, civil liberties and the development of Kashmir’s economy and succeed in thwarting the forces of imperialist intervention, will the State of Kashmir and Jammu, progress on the road to prosperity and independence.
“Cross Roads”, Vol. V, No. 14, Sunday, August 2, 1953.
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