Why did Commonwealth Secretary Philip Noel Baker take such an anti-India stand? Was he acting with the support of Attlee? After all, of all the UNSC members, Britain had the longest experience of dealing with the affairs of the Indian sub-continent. Moreover, as Commonwealth Secretary, Noel-Baker must have had access to the information sent by the British High Commissioner in New Delhi, as well as to the Reports sent by Lord Mountbatten, then Governor-General of India, to the King. Then why this blatant partiality?
Was it because of his own antipathy towards Nehru’s India or the advice given to him by some pro-Pakistan elements in the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), as allegedly happened in 1965 when Harold Wilson was the Prime Minister? The proceedings in the Security Council greatly disappointed India. Expressing his feeling of dismay, Nehru said on 15 February 1948: Instead of discussing and deciding on our reference in a straightforward manner, the nations of the world sitting in that body got lost in power politics. He was not alone in voicing such disappointment. Even The Times (London) wrote on 14 February 1948: …a prolonged shock has been administered to Indian opinion by the course which the discussion at Lake Success has followed.
According to Alan Campbell-Johnson, Lord Mountbatten also felt that Attlee and Noel-Baker did not seem to be sufficiently aware of the psychological influences of this dispute and that their attempt to deal out even-handed diplomacy is producing heavy-handed diplomacy. Perhaps as a reaction to such criticisms, or maybe because of Nehru’s request to the British Prime Minister, conveyed to him by Lord Mountbatten, it seems Attlee did intervene at this stage in a way which was favourable to India. As much was claimed later by Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan, the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan.
What is significant, in a ‘strictly personal and confidential’ letter to Attlee, Krishna Menon wrote on 1 September 1948: The Kashmir business at New York was a great shock to us, perhaps far more than I have been able to convey to you. Thanks to your intervention, it has somewhat improved, but it is a running sore which has affected good relations between our two peoples. (Italics added). This remained a running sore in Indo-British relations during the 1950s, especially because of the anti-India posture of the British government in the UNSC debates on Kashmir in 1957.
Even Aneurin Bevan, the Labour Party leader, was quite critical of the British government’s action. It is possible to argue that the personal relations that some of India’s foreign policy elites had developed with the leaders of the British government during the initial years of India’s independence did help in arresting the deterioration in Indo-British relations. In the post-Nehru years, however, very few Labour leaders had that sort of relationship with their Indian counterparts and the changes in Britain’s domestic politics and foreign policy orientations led to a decline in Indo-British relations in the second half of the 1960s that was triggered by the British government’s partisan attitude to the India-Pakistan war of 1965.
The year 1965 began with India and Pakistan complaining against each other for violation of the cease-fire line (CFL) in Jammu and Kashmir. But a change could be seen in Pakistan’s public posturing. The first signs of Pakistan’s aggressive designs could be seen in the Rann of Kutch on and from 9 April 1965, when in a calibrated move Pakistan escalated the conflict from what were clashes between the patrolling parties of the two sides till the end of March, to a military confrontation. However, further escalation was avoided by the timely intervention of the British and US governments. The armed conflict ended with Britain’s mediatory efforts, with the two British High Commissioners in New Delhi and Islamabad working for de-escalation of the conflict.
Finally, it was Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s personal initiative to bring about a reconciliation between Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan, on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in London (June 1965), assisted by Arthur Bottomley, then Commonwealth Secretary, that led to the signing of a ceasefire agreement by India and Pakistan on 30 June. The two sides agreed to restore the status quoante as on 1 January 1965. The Rann of Kutch dispute was ultimately settled through international arbitration in which India was awarded ninetenths of the territory in the Rann. For Pakistan, the Rann of Kutch adventure was a low-cost test of India’s willingness and ability to fight. Its ultimate aim was to have a settlement of the Kashmir issue by using force, before further accretion to India’s military stren gth through procurement of arms.
Pakistan started sending armed men, generally not in uniform, across the CFL to Jammu and Kashmir from 5 August 1965, for ‘the purpose of armed action on the Indian side’ as stated by the Secretary General in his report to the UNSC. The Press and the radio in Pakistan started a disinformation campaign alleging the outbreak of a popular revolt in Kashmir, to prepare the ground for military intervention by Pakistan.
On 1 September 1965, the Pakistani Army launched a massive attack on the Chhamb-Jaurian sector in Jammu, with an estimated 70 to 90 tanks, in a bid to cut off the Indian supply line to Kashmir. The attack was launched at a point where the international border in Punjab met the CFL (now the LoC) in J&K.
Unable to dislodge the Pakistani forces from areas occupied by them, the Indian Army launched a counter-of fensive on 6 September, across the India-Pakistan international border in Punjab towards Lahore in a bid to relieve Pakistani pressure in Jammu and to prevent any possible attack on India across the international border in Punjab. The armies of the two sides were locked in a see-saw battle along the international border in Punjab and Rajasthan, with limited air offensives, until a ceasefire was brought about by the UNSC on 25 September.
Although none of the parties gained an outright victory, as happened in 1971, India succeeded in foiling Pakistan’s attempt to wrest Kashmir by force. One of the diplomatic casualties of the India-Pakistan war was India’s relations with Britain because of the attitude of the British press as well as of the British government. After the war ended, there was considerable soul searching by British commentators and journalists. The New Delhi correspondent of The Times (London) wrote on 28 September 1965 that in British comments on the war there remained a thin but persistent note of malice against India… English gibes about nonviolence reveal ignorance as well as spite.
But it was the role of British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, particularly the statement issued by him on 6 September 1965 that caused more harm to Indo- British relations. On 3 September, two days after the Pakistani attack, he had sent personal messages to Prime Minister Shastri and President Ayub expressing concern over the deteriorating situation. These messages were identically worded and non-condemnatory. But after the Indian forces crossed the international border in Punjab, the British Prime Minister issued a statement that caused serious resentment in India.
He said: I am deeply concerned at the increasingly serious fighting between India and Pakistan and especially at the news that Indian forces have attacked Pakistani territory across the international frontier in the Punjab. This is a distressing response to the resolution adopted by the Security Council on September 4, calling for a ceasefire.
I have therefore appealed in most urgent terms to both President Ayub and Mr. Shastri to respond to the Security Council resolution and bring the present fighting to an immediate end. This statement was certainly anti-India as there was no mention of the fact that Pakistan had initiated the conflict in August, by sending armed infiltrators to Jammu and Kashmir and then launching, on 1 September, a massive attack in the Chhamb-Jaurian sector of Jammu. Indo-British relations reached a new low.
(The writer is Professor (Retired) of International Relations and former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Jadavpur University)