India and Kashmir
It is a great pity that the Prime Minister of India should have marred his recent and very welcome visit to this country by an unfortunate and quite unjustifiable attack on Pakistan. Nothing could do more to alienate sympathy with India herself. The attain- ment of independence by the two parts of the Indian peninsula was viewed with satisfaction, if with some intelligible anxiety, in this country, as has been the progress both Dominions have made towards stability and self-confidence. One of them is, of course, demonstrably the stronger of the two, and any suspicion that India entertained either secret or overt designs of reuniting the peninsula by force or even by economic pressure would create a profoundly unfavourable impression here. The hope is that the two will prosper side by side, co-operating where they can and accepting loyally a third-party judgement, that of the United Nations or some other, where any apparently irreconcilable difference separates them. There is only one such difference at the present moment, the un- settled dispute about the future of Kashmir. There is at least no fighting going on the cease-fire took effect many months ago, but a definite truce has not been established, as it must be before the plebiscite regarding the adhesion of the predominantly Muslim province to India or Pakistan can be held The plebiscite has been agreed on by both sides in principle ; so has the appointment of the American Admiral Nimitz as head of the plebiscite commission. (There could, incidentally, be no better choice). But objections are still being made and procrastination still achieved, much more by the Indians than by the Pakistanis. Clearly outside troops must be with- drawn before the plebiscite is taken. That means Indian troops. But India is making this conditional on the withdrawal of the Muslim Azads, who, as natives of Kashmir, are in quite another category. All this creates a lamentable situation. The Kashmir dispute cannot remain unsettled indefinitely. At present responsibility for the delays rests much more on India than on Pakistan. It is to be hoped that Pandit Nehru realises how unfortunate an impression this is creating.
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